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The Life of Nelson, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
page 32 of 497 (06%)
or even the naval officer, in those days of sailing ships and simple
weapons was much less sharply marked than it has since become. Skill
in seamanship, from the use of the marlinespike and the sail-needle
up to the full equipping of a ship and the handling of her under
canvas, was in either service the prime essential. In both alike,
cannon and small arms were carried; and the ship's company, in the
peaceful trader as well as in the ship of war, expected to repel force
with force, when meeting upon equal terms. With a reduced number of
naval vessels in commission, and their quarter-decks consequently
over-crowded with young officers, a youth was more likely to find on
board them a life of untasked idleness than a call to professional
occupation and improvement. Nelson therefore was sent by his careful
guardian to a merchant-ship trading to the West Indies, to learn upon
her, as a foremast hand, the elements of his profession, under
conditions which, from the comparative fewness of the crew and the
activity of the life, would tend to develop his powers most rapidly.
In this vessel he imbibed, along with nautical knowledge, the
prejudice which has usually existed, more or less, in the merchant
marine against the naval service, due probably to the more rigorous
exactions and longer terms of enlistment in the latter, although the
life in other respects is one of less hardship; but in Nelson's day
the feeling had been intensified by the practice of impressment, and
by the severe, almost brutal discipline that obtained on board some
ships of war, through the arbitrary use of their powers by captains,
then insufficiently controlled by law. In this cruise he seems to have
spent a little over a year; a time, however, that was not lost to him
for the accomplishment of the period of service technically required
to qualify as a lieutenant, his name continuing throughout on the
books of the "Triumph," to which he returned in July, 1772.

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